The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-15)

SUNDAY, MAY 15 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ EE G5

BY LEE JOURDAN

When our granddaughter, Pay-
ton, was born 10 years ago, my
wife dutifully set out to share
with Payton’s parents all she had
learned about processing Black
hair.
We are Black. Our son, Byron,
had some knowledge, but men
traditionally don’t take on that
responsibility. And our daughter-
in-law, Julie, is White. She had
not grown up with the stigma of
curly hair, or the challenges Black
women, like my wife, faced dur-
ing her career where she felt
compelled to replicate accepted
Eurocentric hairstyles, which are
unnatural to those of African
descent: the chemical com-
pounds, hot combs, pressing
irons, rollers, extensions, wigs,
cursing, crying and prayer — or
some combination thereof.
Sometimes daily.
By the time she was 3 years old,
after watching the Disney movie
“Frozen,” Payton yearned for
“princess hair” — long flowing
locks that blew in the wind.
Julie only saw her daughter’s
naturally curly hair as beautiful.
She would have none of this
“straightening.” Instead, she re-
searched “mixed girls’ hair” and
discovered products that would
work with her daughter’s hair,
preparing her for a world where
she could be proud of her hair as
it was.
But beyond the potential social
challenges, Julie may not have
been aware that her daughter
could be discriminated against in
school and when she seeks em-
ployment because of her hair.
Hairstyle discrimination is le-
gal.
Enter the Crown Act, which
stands for “Creating a Respectful
and Open World for Natural
Hair.” It is designed to provide
protection from discrimination
for people who choose to wear
hair that is “tightly coiled or
tightly curled, locs, cornrows,
twists, braids, Bantu knots, and
Afros.” On March 21, the U.S.

House of Representatives passed a bill to make it unlawful to discriminate because of hairstyle. Next, the bill will go to the Senate, where measures to pass a similar act have previously failed. If approved by the Senate, the measure would ban race-based hair discrimination in employ- ment and against those partici- pating in federally assisted programs, housing programs and public accommodations. B ut Republicans generally op- pose the idea of such protections. Only 14 of 209 Republicans voted to approve the act in the House. At the state level, 16 states have either passed a similar law or are considering it. Only two of the 16 states have a higher represen- tation of registered Republicans than Democrats. To those unaware, or not im- pacted by this reality, the bill may seem trivial, or concocted by the “woke” culture. It is not.

Just one example is the case of Chastity Jones. In 2010, she was fired from her job because she wore her hair in a short, dreadlocks style. She sued her former employer, lost and appealed to the Supreme Court, where she lost again. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court ruling, arguing that a hairstyle is not inevitable and immutable just because it is a reasonable result of hair texture. That we must legislate once again to ban discrimination may seem unnecessary to some. But America has a long history of doing so. We have had to legislate the right for women to vote, for Blacks to freely use public trans- portation, and for Asians to im- migrate, for example. This most recent bill addresses something much more basic, much more intrinsically human — the right of Americans to enjoy, without bias, prejudice, or dis-

crimination, their right to display their hair in a manner of their choosing. But here’s the rub. Even if the act passes, it will not address the underlying issue, which is a bias toward Eurocentric hairstyles. Bias is a natural human trait and cannot be legislated away. It must be identified, labeled and miti- gated. Unless we take additional steps to address this bias, those who seek to discriminate will just work around the legislation and find another way to do so. And then another and another. Discrimination whack-a-mole. America, in particular corporate America, needs to demonstrate that it does value diversity in the workplace. Here’s what I have learned as a former chief diversity and inclusion officer and special adviser that produces results: l Walk the talk. You would be hard pressed to find a company

mission statement that does not claim to put employees first, that values inclusivity and diversity, or says that employees are our most important asset. Make sure your policies back it up. Don’t wait for federal or state legislation to outlaw discrimination in your organization. Make the change by publishing HR policies explicitly stating that hairstyle is not a factor in hiring or promo- tion. l The most impactful way to demonstrate support for authenticity is to demonstrate your own. Whether you are a supervisor or not, you can model behavior for others. Be it your authentic hairstyle or other traits that define you, bring your authentic self to work. l Encourage your employees to see people who are different. Not in a “sideshow” way, but one that leverages business as usual. Give a visibly diverse person (based on gender, ethnicity, hairstyle, or a person with a handi- cap) a platform without making any reference to what makes them diverse. For example, a person with dreadlocks facilitat- ing a companywide town hall. l Review job selection criteria and job selection results for trends. A hiring manager may be camouflaging their biases by us- ing criteria that is not critical to the job. l Practice conscious inclusion. Being an inclusive leader doesn’t just happen, it requires a conscious shift in behavior. Chal- lenge your leadership team to demonstrate a shift to inclusive leadership. My hope is that someday, Pay- ton, and millions of people who look like her, will not just be accepted for their authenticity, but admired for it — and seen as the princess she is.

Lee Jourdan retired as Chevron’s chief diversity and inclusion officer. He now serves as an independent director with PROS Holdings, and a special adviser to FTI Consulting.

PERSPECTIVE

My grandchild could still face discrimination for her natural hair

JULIE JOURDAN Payton Jourdan, with her naturally curly hair that her mother Julie insists is beautiful and maintains.

Reader: In the past two years, my organization has used a communications platform that hosts video meetings, instant messaging, live chats, VoIP phone service, and online project collaboration. I despise it. The “blink and you’ve missed it” notifications, coupled with the amount of message spam my organization puts out (“10 tips to be productive today!”), means that I frequently miss instant messages sent to me and won’t see them for hours. There is no situation where contacting me via instant message is more effective than sending me an email, and yet this seems to be the new norm. Is there a polite, professional way to let my co-workers know that email is the best way to get in touch with me, or do I simply need to accept this new, irritating way of working? Karla: I read you loud and clear. Trying to focus on a task or conversation while being swarmed by chirps, dings, chimes and pop-ups is infuriating. When your employer offers multiple internal communication channels, monitoring and responding to them all can easily consume most of the workday. Instead of being productive, you’re performing triage — and, as you note, that makes it harder to catch the important, relevant, truly time-sensitive messages. As always, the problem is not the software so much as how it’s used or abused. Fortunately, where technology opens a window, it usually includes a way to shut it, or at least install a filter. The solution is twofold: Block out the riffraff. Do a Google search for “mute notifications” or “filter messages” and the name of the software your company uses. This will let you suppress pop- ups, silence audible alarms, and shut down automated email notifications that may be cluttering your inbox. You may even be able to customize those settings to mute notifications from certain senders while letting others through. Be sure to periodically take a break from working to scan your silenced messages and filters, just to make sure nothing important slipped through. Redirect the VIPs. If your software allows you to set a permanent status message, use it to let people know a better way to reach you. For example, when someone instant-messages me at my day job, my status message pops up to let them know my notifications are muted, and email is a faster route. I’ve added a similar message to my email signature, along with my mobile phone number for urgent matters. Fortunately, most people I work with want to respect my time as much as I want to respect theirs. They trust me to follow up in a reasonable amount of time, and I trust them not to blow up my phone with issues that could wait for email. Of course, we’ve all worked with those anxious souls who have to call “just to see if you got my email,” and your workplace may have different expectations about response methods and times. But we’ve learned through the coronavirus pandemic that different people thrive in different environments, and that includes communication methods. While some people prefer putting their thoughts in writing, others would rather talk them out. And still others would prefer to receive and handle queries in the moment, rather than let emails pile up. If we can accept a hybrid work model with flexible hours to let individuals perform at their best, we can certainly extend that concept to respecting preferences for email, phone or other communication channels. If you’re patient and consistent in your responses, and if you are as respectful of other people’s ways of working as you want them to be of yours, you can eventually train most people to give you what you need — especially if it means they will get what they need from you that much faster. [email protected]

Drowning

in a deluge

of instant

messages

Work Advice KARLA L. MILLER

BY TRACY JAN

The rib joint and whiskey bar
that Terri Evans opened in the
South Loop of Chicago with her
401(k) savings drew mostly tour-
ists and convention-goers — un-
til the coronavirus pandemic and
stay-at-home orders swept the
country beginning March 2020.
Evans worried about keeping her
12 full-time employees on the
payroll.
“When things went dark, they
went really dark,” said Evans, 47.
“It was time to get creative and a
little scrappy.”
She decided to start a new
business delivering food and li-
quor to the city’s boating com-
munity, spread among Chicago’s
10 harbors in Lake Michigan.
In the early months of the
pandemic, Black-owned small
businesses closed at twice the
rate of other businesses, with
41 percent shutting down, ac-
cording to April 2020 census
data. Concentrated in the retail,
restaurant and other service in-
dustries, Black owned-business-
es had a harder time pivoting
given pandemic restrictions.
They operated on thinner mar-
gins, lacked relationships with
banks and were shut out of the
federal government’s relief pro-
gram for small businesses.
Then Black business owner-
ship rebounded, soaring higher
than it had been pre-pandemic, a
Washington Post analysis of Bu-
reau of Labor Statistics showed.
In 2021, Black-owned small busi-
nesses were created at the fastest
clip in at least 26 years.
Evans’s restaurant, Windy City
Ribs & Whiskey, is two miles
from the water and the city’s
6,000 boat slips. She launched
Dockside Delivery on her restau-
rant’s website in May 2020 in
hopes of catering to this new
clientele.
“I’m going to focus on this
audience that still has money,
who’s still hanging out in the
middle of this pandemic,” she
said.
She started at the closest har-
bor, favored by established,
mostly White boaters. They were
not initially welcoming. “They
were like, ‘Why are you in my
harbor trying to sell me food
packages?’ ” she said.
Her business hit its stride later
that summer when she focused
on the Black boating community,
especially younger female char-
ter owners. “They were going to

figure out how to make me win,” Evans said. “I realized I should have always started within my community.” She brought in other strug- gling women- and Black-owned restaurants, offering menu op- tions from Cajun to organic sal- ads and sandwiches. Her opera- tions team picked up the orders and made the deliveries. Her liquor license — and the relax- ation of liquor laws to allow alcohol delivery — made the business profitable. She was able to retain her full staff even though she had stopped serving lunch at the restaurant. Now she’s looking to expand Dockside Delivery to other cities with larger boating communities like Miami by 2023. First she needs the capital and the techno- logical resources to create an app. But her parents had always warned her against carrying debt. “The only way to scale is to use money to scale,” Evans said. “Otherwise you stay a small business. It’s minimal thinking that you can’t bet on yourself enough to go out and get a loan.” After pivoting successfully at the start of the pandemic, some Black-owned businesses now confront the economic challenges of labor shortages, supply chain delays and inflation. Tyrone Foster, owner of a 20- employee landscaping company in Portland, Ore., had expected his residential clientele to dry up during the pandemic recession. He got certified as a minority- owned business in hopes of land- ing commercial and public works contracts with more stable budgets. His company, Precision Land- scape Services, obtained a two- year contract maintaining a 10- mile stretch for the city’s trans- portation network in October 2020, work that represents roughly 10 percent of his business. To his surprise, demand for outdoor living spaces shot up as families hunkered down at home. “People were like, ‘Okay, I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to just stay inside and have a muddy mess in my backyard. I’m going to transform this into some kind of oasis that I could enjoy during the pandemic,’ ” said Foster, 51. His company ended 2020 with record revenue. But the clamor

for residential landscaping services amid a hot real estate market soon outpaced his ability to deliver. Without enough workers, Foster found himself turning away 50 percent of potential clients. “I was sick about it,” he said. “I could literally have doubled the size of the business if I could have hired people. I couldn’t find anybody.” He offered a $1,000 signing bonus, which he increased to $1,500 after receiving no appli- cants. He offered employees a $1,500 referral bonus for every new hire they brought. With no takers, he pooled the bonuses and advertised a raffle for those who worked three months of the summer to win $10,000 in Sep- tember. “Goose eggs! Nothing! It still didn’t move people,” Foster said. “At that point I gave up. There’s nothing else I could do.” He said some people didn’t want to jeopardize their health

by working, even after he began paying workers mileage to follow the company truck in their own cars to avoid having more than one person in a vehicle. Others told him they could get by on federal stimulus checks. And he faced competition from other companies such as Amazon ag- gressively hiring for warehouse jobs and Taco Bell offering man- agers $100,000 a year. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Wages, gas, product and ma- terial costs have also risen. Equipment, replacement parts, even plants have become harder to source. And he expects demand for landscaping to plateau as people begin spending their time — and budget — on travel, restaurants and other experiences. Families who had dropped $20,000 to $100,000 on yard makeovers won’t need large-scale work for at least another five years, he said.

Foster said his profits in 2021 dropped by more than 2 percent. Yet in March, he bought another landscaping company across the river in Vancouver, Wash., bring- ing on 15 employees. In New York, Tammeca Roch- ester was about to expand her spin studio, Harlem Cycle, when the pandemic forced her to shut her doors. To keep the business afloat, Rochester rented out her studio bikes and delivered them to clients’ homes. That income cov- ered her $3,750 monthly rent. Her instructors generated income by teaching classes live- streamed over Zoom. She created an on-demand platform with more than 250 workout videos from cycling to cardio, strength and recovery as well as cooking demonstrations. Rochester, a former mechani- cal engineer, and her boyfriend had opened the studio in 2016, bootstrapped with savings after she was repeatedly denied loans despite her excellent credit and six-figure salary. Without a relationship with traditional banks, Rochester said, she was at a disadvantage when it came to securing government pandemic aid through the Paycheck Protection Program. Eventually, another small Black- owned business connected her with an accountant who helped her get the money. She also received grants from corpora- tions and foundations intent on saving minority-owned businesses. “The racial reckoning of cor- porations only happened for a year and a half,” said Rochester,

“Those $5,000 to $10,000
grants helped create a buffer, but
that would not propel us to a
whole other level.”
Her studio reopened after 15
months.
And with an interest-free loan
from a community foundation
and two other loans from an
economic development corpora-
tion and a community lender,
Rochester was finally able to
launch her second Harlem studio
in April.
Reggae and soca blast in the
classes. The smell of peppermint
permeates the air. To make up for
the shortage of instructors, sev-
eral of whom moved out of state
during the pandemic, one of her
instructors has begun training
clients to teach.
“I felt like I had created a
business four times during the
pandemic,” she said.

Andrew Van Dam contributed to this report.

After brief recession, a Black business boom

Entrepreneurs who expanded during pandemic now face labor, supply chain, inflation challenges

TAYLOR GLASCOCK FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Terri Evans, owner of Windy City Ribs & Whiskey in Chicago, launched D ockside Delivery during the pandemic shutdowns.

The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-15)

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